Peter Giersch's "Talking of Michelangelo" is an account of his trip to a French monastery to plunge into a week-long Ignatian retreat. But who wants to read about the inner musings of someone’s religious retreat? Happily, the most likely answer is: You do. Peter Giersch has been a French teacher, a catechist, a business entrepreneur [...]
Several years ago, when I was in Europe leading a pilgrimage tour to England with Joseph Pearce, I learned that the Shroud of Turin was to be on display for veneration in Turin. After the pilgrimage in England I made my way to Italy where I was joined by a friend. After a few days [...]
Guiding the reader through the seven-week Easter season, Laura Bedingfeld's "Arise" offers daily meditations from Sacred Scripture, showing how the theme of resurrection is woven through the great saga of salvation history from the beginning. There are plenty of devotional aids produced for the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent, but not enough for the [...]
What are we to make of the Christian who says: “I am not so naïve or literal in my understanding as to expect Jesus physically to rise from the dead. Surely the true meaning of this belief is that he continued to exist in some spiritual manner”? Some years ago there was an Anglican bishop [...]
My own continued admiration of Gerald Finzi’s majestic and moving anthem, "Lo, The Full, Final Sacrifice," lies not only in the masterful blend of music and words, but also in the confluence of so many personal memories that touch and move me. Sometimes a piece of music or art brings different aspects of one’s life [...]
In a world of spoiled children, indigent adults, victim complainers, and entitled brats of all ages, the one who accepts responsibility for himself will have the tools for high self-esteem, achievement, and success in every area of life. I was five years old when I “got saved”. We had been to the Sunday evening service [...]
Whatever a person’s place in life, Saint Benedict offers a “little Rule for beginners.” The principles of the spiritual life which he sets down put us down firmly in life right where we are. By paralleling family and monastery, today’s reader can glean simple yet practical wisdom for, as well as extraordinary insight into, the [...]
Restorationist church movements—whether they be traditionalist Catholic or Protestant sects—are products of their contemporary culture: well-meaning but artificial attempts at restoration, which end up being no more than the past viewed through a half-baked ecclesiology and a rose-tinted theology. As a boy, I attended a church that was founded in 1962. It grew out of [...]
During this season of Lent it is helpful to reflect on how mimetic desire—defined as “imitation envy"—connects with and influences the classic seven deadly sins. The French thinker Rene Girard had a seminal insight which has shed light on just about every aspect of human endeavor from theology and anthropology to economics, politics, psychology, and [...]
David Angten’s "The Medievalist" takes us into the grubby underbelly of Tinseltown, but there is a morality woven through the story that is convincing. A gripping, thought-provoking, entertaining, and fun novel, I hope it will not be classified as “Catholic fiction.” It's too good for that. Having somewhat of a public platform in these pages [...]
In “Ash Wednesday,” T.S. Eliot repudiated his ironic style along with his despairing and nihilistic view of the world. When he wrote it, he was turning from the hell of the wasteland of unbelief to receive his ashes and begin his long Lent. T.S. Eliot’s secret baptism in 1927 marked one of the most remarkable [...]
One comes away from both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" and Evelyn Waugh’s "Brideshead Revisited" with an acute sense of the emptiness of the jazz age and the despair at the heart of all our delusions and decadence. One also can’t help but compare the lives of the authors themselves. On re-reading The Great Gatsby (thanks [...]
As one of the greatest bridges from the ancient world to the medieval, St. Augustine of Hippo’s "Confessions" illuminates the path forward through the gloom of the modern world. And C.C. Pecknold's new book, "Fire on the Altar" is a wonderful guide to this masterpiece. Fire on the Altar: Setting Our Souls Ablaze through St. [...]
Philip Lawler rightly observes that the core problem in the Catholic Church, and at the heart of American Christianity in general, is a loss of faith. In his novel "Ghost Runner," he takes us into the corridors of power both in diocese and D.C., reminding us how venality, vanity, corruption, immorality, and lack of faith [...]